Road improvement to close Black Balsam

A popular trail access area and jumping off point for the Shining Rock Wilderness area at Balsam Road will be closed from Sept. 2 through early October for a resurfacing project.

Balsam Road, located off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Haywood County, is a high-traffic trailhead for the Sam’s Knob area and balds of Shining Rock.

“We’ve received a number of complaints regarding the condition of the road. This project will address the numerous potholes and greatly improve visitor experience,” said Derek Ibarguen, district ranger for the U.S. Forest Service Pisgah Ranger District. “To avoid the highest use times and to be able to meet the requirement of resurfacing the road during warm weather, we are implementing the project just after the Labor Day weekend and before the leaf season.”

Reading Room

Like some other readers I know, my taste in books these last 20 years or so has shifted from fiction to non-fiction, especially history, biography, and literary studies. I still follow certain novelists — Anne Tyler, Pat Conroy, James Lee Burke, and others — and still review novels for this paper, but find that works of fiction simply don’t appeal as much as when I was in my twenties and thirties, when I read stacks of novels and poetry.